audacity

Bells on College Green – a Sound Design Project

This is the second of my two final projects for “Sonic Measures,” a Sound Design course I took this spring with Professor Terry Adkins and Marc Blumthal.

The assignment was to take some video footage which was primarily visual in nature (and natural – not a performance) and to use sound design to enhance the raw footage. In Logic, to enhance the audio already present from the video (which was full of ringing church bells which inspired the sound design,) I used raw waveforms generated in Audacity and used time, pitch, and layering effects and reverberation to create a soundscape full of sounds that are evocative of bells or otherwise mimic bells’ characteristics.

The video footage was taken on College Green at Penn, and between 36th & 34th Streets // between Locust Walk and Walnut Street over the course of several afternoons at around the same time, thus having clock bells tolling in all of my footage.

New Project: Foley Fiction – a Soundtrack without a Film

This was my final assignment for my Electronic Composition Class at Penn with Professor Primosch. Almost all featured sounds are made from manipulated sine waves, chirps, or (mostly) recordings of me singing or speaking or making noise into a microphone. I recorded a crowd of students throwing frisbees as well as some ambient city sounds in the middle of the night, but those samples were used sparsely and every sound in this project is ‘foley.’

Here is a narration to guide you through this film soundtrack [without a film]:

Incognito at his daytime desk job at the office, an assassin receives an assignment via telephone. He clears his desk, packs his bag, quickly grabs his keys, and walks casually to the elevator around the corner from his cubicle. He takes the elevator down four flights, then its doors open onto a train station. Crossing a platform, pop music plays on the radio. The assassin walks through the station unnoticed to his parked motorcycle. Across the platform, the assassin boards and starts his motorcycle. He rides the motorcycle through a windy set of tunnels, until… he reaches a large crowded roadside restaurant. He parks his motorcycle, strolls along the sidewalk until he reaches a table in the middle of the street-side seating where – he fires a single shot, eliminating his target.  In the wake of his crime’s commission, the assassin skulks away unseen.

I created this project using Audacity and Logic Pro 7.

Enjoy: HERE IT IS.